A-Rod won’t be disciplined

The commissioner’s office has decided not to discipline Alex Rodriguez in light of its investigation into whether he lied about his use of performance-enhancing drugs in a meeting with baseball officials in March, according to people in baseball with knowledge of the matter.

In light of the fact that the only evidence of A-Rod’s a-roiding came from illegally leaked test results at a time when baseball wasn’t disciplining anyone for taking PEDs, this is not surprising. At most they had him on lying to the investigators about when he was using, but given how many players waltz into their disciplinary appeals claiming that they weren’t really throwing at that guy, baseball wasn’t ever going to do anything to Rodriguez over this. This was interesting:

The New York Times reported in May that members of baseball’s department of investigations had contacted Selena Roberts, the author of “A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez,” and several of Rodriguez’s associates to determine whether Rodriguez had used performance-enhancing drugs for a longer period than he admitted . . .

. . . The investigation proved difficult for the commissioner’s office, but it also showed that its investigations department was willing to try to develop evidence against one of the game’s premier stars, particularly in its effort to interview Presinal. Many of the accusations in the book were not damning and were based on anonymous sources. Other accusations were several years old, and Roberts declined to cooperate with the investigation.

I’m assuming that Roberts was willing to cooperate but that she simply lost the little notebook containing her sources’ identities and all of her meticulous notes. She usually keeps it under her unicorn, but it may have fallen behind the perpetual motion machine she keeps in the back room of her summer home in Atlantis.

So Craig, would you have been happier if Selena Roberts had “cooperated” with MLB (I love stories that equate sports leagues with, say, the federal government, but I digress).

Let’s assume that someone actually told Roberts the stuff she wrote about in the book. Maybe an unreliable, lying someone, but a real, actual person or people. Should Roberts out her source to MLB? Wouldn’t that do exactly what you’re constantly accusing Roberts of doing – violating every jouralistic code of ethics in existance?

I’m assuming from the story’s referce to Roberts not “cooperat[ing]” with MLB’s investigation that, when MLB called to ask Roberts who her sources were, she told MLB to go to hell. Which is exactly what she should have done.

Oh, I would have slammed her if she had. This slam wasn’t for her not cooperating in MLB’s investigation. This is a continuing slam over her shoddy reporting in her book. An oldie but a goody if you will. Cheap? Sure! But if she can dredge up questionable allegations from 15 years ago in order to sell books, I can replay criticisms of her work from a few months ago.

Roberts (and Schmidt) used far too many unnamed sources in their work. The problem with this is that we don’t know the agendas of those sources, their veracity and in general what was left on the cutting room florr that did not fit the predetermined narrative.

I’ve always wanted to know if a source lies to a reporter, shouldn’t the reporter out said person?